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_ Did the Jews Kill Jesus? 


AND 


The Myth of the Resurrection 


_BY 
W. A. CAMPBELL 


NEW YORK 
Peter Eckler Publishing Company 
1927 


Copyright, 1927; 
PETER ECKLER PUBLISHING CO. 


PRINTED IN THE U. 5. A. 
BY FREDERICK GUMBRECHT, BROOKLYN, N. Ye 


CONTENTS 


DIOSTHE JEWS) KID UbSUS (wt cee) Wins s 7 
BT CIC Sent a rete Leas ak Gaye eue nn 57 
PADDED Ue acy cr eae oe ees 59 

Concerning the Millennium............... an OF 

THE MYTH OF THE RESURRECTION................-------- 63 

Excerpt from the Gospel of Petev........ 68 
Excerpt from Clement’s Epistle to 
COTINCHIANS eee een tages 41 
TATA OT os le Wey eS aA ease dec ORY Ca po all iba cee Mente 96 
Fwy Oev Ca Wah 7d ay Sale ly eins A Pe aN Neral ie iia 100 
Phlegon’s Resurrection Story 
FMpay ates Ua hb cnn © Glance Alle dab Nplate aang Sylar) s ha eet li at 107 


Dr. More on the Resurrection. 





DID THE JEWS KILL JESUS? 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/didjewskilljesusOOcamp 


DID THE JEWS KILL JESUS? 


I 


Oceans of tears and rivers of blood 
have washed the hard and stony road 
along which the Jew has groped his way 
through the lands of the earth during 
the centuries following the destruction of 
his Holy City and expulsion from his 
homeland. The causes of this persecution 
—the bitterest in history—are twofold: 
economic and racial, and religious. I 
shall not attempt to discuss the problem 
as to what per cent of this persecution 
has been due to sociological and economic 
causes, and what to religious (possibly 
they stand somewhere in the ratio of 
sixty to forty), but I shall try to answer 
this pertinent question: What historical 


8 Dip THE Jews Kuti Jesus? 


justification is there for the charge on 
which Gentile religious hatred was for 
centuries based—namely, that the Jews 
put to death the Eternal God, manifested 
in the person of their countryman, Jesus 
of Nazareth? 

If the affairs of men were conducted 
on logical lines, then every Christian 
Church should have a form of blessing, 
to be recited at every service, on the 
Jew for the part which he played in the 
Drama of Salvation. Assuming that the 
Jews had committed the atrocious deed 
for which they have been hated and 
hounded, now these weary centuries, the 
question remains: If the Christian dogma 
is true, and Jesus was God come to re- 
deem by his blood the world from the 
fatal corruption of the first sin, were the 
Jews aught else than a blind tool in the 
hands of Providence? If such redemp- 
tion is the consummation of the divine 
plan, then it was ordered in the councils 


Dip THE Jews Kix Jesus? 9 


of the Hternal (i.e. of Jesus himself) ; 
and far from hating the Jews for thus 
helping along the salvation of the whole 
world by the shedding of Jesus’s blood 
on Calvary—far from hating and perse- 
cuting—those who rejoice that the death 
of Jesus has taken from them all taint 
of sin and guilt, should turn with deep 
and humble gratitude to the Jews, but 
for whom such salvation had not been 
wrought. Such a suggestion is, of course, 
absurd, for logic plays a very small part 
in our lives. Indeed, only children are 
logical in their reasoning, because their 
lives have not been complicated by the 
thousand and one little grains of the sand 
of experience that destroy the smooth- 
running machinery of logical thought, 
which can work only in a vacuum. 


Now, in this inquiry there are not a 
few scholars and critics who would at 
once apply for a nolle prosequi, on the 


10 Dip THE JEws Kivu Jesus? 


ground that as there is not sufficient 
evidence to prove that Jesus of Nazareth 
is an historical person, that he actually 
lived and taught, there is no occasion to 
proceed with an inquiry as to who was 
responsible for his death. If Bruno 
Bauer’s theory is accepted—a theory which 
is to-day ably represented and defended 
by Dutch Biblical scholars and by a 
growing number of French and German 
critics—the Jew is at once purged of the 
guilt of having put to death the Messiah 
and Saviour. The theory of Bruno Bauer 
and the critics of his school is, of course, 
that Christianity is the impersonal out- 
come of an alliance between Stoicism 
and the Hellenistic or Grecized Judaism 
that flourished at Alexandria, and that 
Jesus himself is the assumed and freely 
invented personal inearnation of that 
movement, whose history is contained in 
the Psalms and the Prophets.? 


1. And, one might add, in Plato, who, in his 


Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 11 


The tendency of present-day Continen- 
tal scholarship, represented by such as 
Bultmann, Bertram, Schmidt, Lohmeyer, 
von Soden, is to interpret the gospel nar- 
ratives as ‘‘Cult-story’’ (Kulterzaehlung), 
projected as history by the creative 
Christian consciousness, under dogmatic, 
cultural, apologetic, and other impulses. 
Thus, while not openly and formally re- 
jecting the historicity of Jesus, they do so 
virtually and practically, retaining hardly 
a single incident or gospel datum, not 
even the Passion story, as historic. In 
England the most eminent exponent of 
this view of Christian origins is Gilbert 
Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at 
Oxford University. In his Five Stages of 
Greek Religion (Columbia University 
Press, 1925) Professor Murray advances 
the theory that Christianity 1s simply a 
Republic, described the Just Man as one “who will 
be scourged, tortured, imprisoned, blinded; last of 


all, when he has endured all this. he will be impaled 
(crucified) .” 


12 Dip THE Jews Kavu Jesus? 


branch of Hellenic religious thought and 
culture grafted on a Hebrew stock. In 
America Dr. William Benjamin Smith, 
late of Tulane University, is protagonist 
for the non-historicity school. He ably 
maintains that Christianity was ‘‘his- 
torically natural and necessary—a three- 
century longs development, prolongation, 
spiritualization of a millenial tendence;’’ 
and that the original Jesus-cult was the 
worship of the One God under the person 
or aspect of Saviour or Healer. 

We must, however, dismiss the applica- 
tion for a nolle prosequm, and proceed with 
our inquiry as to who was responsible 
for Jesus’s death, on the ground that, 
at the present stage of historical criti- 
cism, the non-historicity of Jesus is far 
from being established, and we must, 
therefore, assume that he did live and 
die in the first century of our era. 

It is one thing, however, to admit the 
historicity of Jesus; it is quite another 


Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 13 


to admit that we have any very reliable 
biographical records of his life. In spite 
of the fact that Jesus is alleged to have 
worked great miracles, even the miracle 
of restoring the dead to life; in spite of 
the alleged fact that his birth was marked 
by one of the most heinous crimes in 
history—Herod’s murder of thousands of 
infants; in spite of the fact that all the 
circumstances attending his trial were 
most unusual—how unusual they were I 
hope to show later; in spite, too, of the 
fact that the most startling occurrences 
in nature took place at his cruciftxion,® 

2. Josephus, who was at no pains to hide Herod’s 
crimes, knows nothing of the Massacre of the 
Infants, nor does any other historian. 

8. Gibbon ironically remarked on “the supine in- 
attention of the pagan and philosophic world to the 
numerous and surprising miracles which were pre- 
sented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their 
reason, but to their senses ... Under the reign of 
Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated 
province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a 


preternatural darkness of three hours. [And a num- 
ber of dead saints left their graves and visited their 


14 Dip THE Jews Kivi Jesus? 


and that he himself actually rose from 
the dead and lived on earth for either 
forty hours or forty days—all these al- 
leged facts notwithstanding, not a single 
historian or writer living at or shortly 
after the time Jesus is said to have 
moved about in Palestine preserves even 
his name.* From this we are forced—l 
see no escape from it—to conclude that 


friends in Jerusalem.] This happened during the 
lifetime of Seneca and the Elder Pliny, who must 
have experienced the immediate effects or received 
the earliest intelligence of the prodigies. Each of 
these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded 
ali the great phenomena of nature—earthquakes, 
meteors, comets, and eclipses—which his indefatig- 
able curiosity could collect. Both the one and the 
other have omitted to mention [these the most extra- 
ordinary of all].” 

4. The passage in Josephus mentioning Jesus is 
admitted to be an audacious and flagrant forgery 
by most serious scholars, orthodox and heterodox. 
Even the Benedictine editors of Origen surrendered 
the passage as spurious. (‘The celebrated passage 
of Josephus concerning Jesus Christ was not ex- 
tant in the age of Origen, or if extant it was con- 
sidered spurious and supposititious,” I, col. 1911.) 


Dip THE JEws Kit Jesus? ib 


the immediate influence exercised by Jesus 
upon his contemporaries could not have 
been so deep and great as we generally 
suppose from our acquaintance with the 
gospels. And from this fact we may con- 
clude further that no carefully prepared 
and sifted records of his doings were 
preserved by his personal followers or 
acquaintances. aking the most conserva- 
tive estimate possible of the date of com- 
position and final redaction of our gospels, 
it is clear that at least one generation 
intervened between those who first wrote 
down the events and those who could have 
been eye-witnesses of them. There are a 
great many circumstances which point to 
a much later date; but, as that problem 
is a vast and complicated one, we had 
better leave it severely alone, and con- 
centrate our attention on the documents 
as we now have them. (The reader must 
understand that all I have said is analo- 
gous to the general examination of wit- 


16 Dip THE JEws Kitt Jesus? 


‘nesses in a law court, with a view to dis- 
covering their reliability.) 


Now, then, let us glance at the four 
gospels. The first three, called the Syn- 
optics, are very different from the fourth, 
that of John. In its very introduction, 
the latter ‘betrays itself to be a philo- 
sophical reconstruction of the life of Jesus. 
Nor are the discrepancies in the related 
events less striking; situations and oc- 
currences, persons and places, are intro- 
duced, of which no other account makes 
mention. The scene of the fourth is not 
Galilee, but Judea, and more specially 
Jerusalem. The three excursions to 
Galilee are treated as mere episodes. 
Thus disappears the common stem of 
events on which the Synoptics are in the 
main agreed. Most of the miraculous 
deeds of the Synoptics are wanting. In 
this life of Jesus there are no lepers nor 
publicans and sinners; no anthologies of 


Dip THE Jews Kitty Jesus? 17 


ethical precepts nor homely parables. Pro- 
fessor Burkitt goes so far as to express 
the pious hope that some of the utterances 
put into Jesus’s mouth by the author of 
the fourth gospel are not authentic! Most - 
serious, however, of the differences is 
that which makes Jesus die in the Syn- 
optics on the 15th day of the month Nisan, 
and in John’s account on the 14th day of 
Nisan—a change which is almost certainly 
the result of theological considerations, 
and one which no one would have had an 
interest to make before the famous con- 
troversy that raged long and bitterly in 
the churches of Asia over the proper time 
of celebrating Easter. In point of fact, 
the Synoptics make Jesus die on both the 
14th and 15th of Nisan. Mark, in chap. 
xiv, relates that Jesus had partaken of 
the meal described on the day fixed for 
it by the law—that is to say, the 14th 
day of Nisan; he thus assumes the 15th 
to have been the day of the death; 


18 Dip THE JEws KiLu Jesus? 


but in chap. xv, verse 42, he nevertheless 
writes: ‘‘And when even was now come, 
because it was the preparation, that is the 
‘day before the Sabbath’’—from which it 
would appear that Jesus had been cruci- 
fied, not on the 15th day, but on the 14th! 
In Luke we have the same confusion. In 
John’s account, however, the 14th is con- 
sistently maintained. 

‘“‘The three Synoptics call the day on 
which the verdict was found simply Prep- 
aration, that is to say, Friday, without in- 
dicating that it must have had a higher 
eharacter than the ordinary precursor of 
the Sabbath. This is strikingly in contrast 
with the manner in which other passages 
of the gospels (Luke, ii. ‘42% John, iv. 45;2 “ 
vi. 4, vil. 8, xxxvii. 11 and 56, xii. 12; Acts 
ul. 1, and especially Acts xii. 3) speak of 
the Jewish festivals and show deference 
to them.’’ (Hirsch: The Crucifixion, p. 51.) 


Dip THE Jews Kivu JzEsus? 19 


II 


We have noted the very significant fact 
that, while Jesus is made to die on the 
15th day of Nisan in the Synoptics, his 
death is fixed by the fourth gospel as the 
14th of that month; the change being 
probably due to the tendency to make 
Jesus himself the Paschal Lamb of the 
world, instead of allowing him to eat the 
paschal meal. We need not linger over 
these and the hundred and one other 
details of difference patent to the most 
casual reader. Enough has, I trust, been 
said or indicated to establish the fact that 
in the four gospels we have not the ma- 
terial from which to make a biography 
of Jesus, aS we understand the word ‘‘bi- 
ography’’ to-day. It is tolerably certain 
that during the first two Christian cen- 


20 Dip THE JEws Kitz Jesus? 


turies there did not exist any definite, 
authoritative, and historically verifiable 
tradition concerning the earthly career of 
the Christian Saviour-God, and that the 
N. T. documents underwent at that time 
an extensive process of redaction at the 
hands of many unknown editors whose 
interests were didactic and doctrinal rather 
than historical and biographical. As early 
as Paul’s own day—barely twenty years 
after Jesus’s death—there already existed 
another ‘‘gospel’’ which he (Paul) em- 
phatically repudiated. 

The student who is unwilling to proceed 
on the hypothesis that the primitive forms 
of the New Testament writings, or at 
least of the original doctrines and docu- 
ments, underwent extensive revision and 
modification before they were worked up 
into our present canonical scriptures, may 
as well abandon once for all.the problem 
of New Testament interpretation, for out- 
side this hypothesis there is no hope of 


Dip THE Jews Kirti Jesus? 21 


understanding even the most obvious 
facts.” : 
It may be said therefore that most of \» 
the modern ‘‘biographers’’ of Jesus have | 
written novels spun on dogma, or pinned , 
to preconceived idealizations, but most’ 
emphatically not histories. ! 
Dr. Albert Schweitzer, one of the most 
learned and honest critics, says quite 
frankly in his Quest of the Historical 
Jesus (closing chapter headed ‘‘Results’’) : 


4a. Dr. Paul Carus gives an example of how the 
gospels grew by accretion. “A Christian hears that 
when Socrates died he forgave his enemies. A pagan 
may have argued, ‘You see Socrates was nobler than 
Christ.’ But the Christian thinks: ‘Christ was the 
ideal man, therefore he can not have been outdone 
by Socrates; he too must have forgiven his enemies.’ 
The passage in Luke xxiii, 34, does not occur in the 
oldest manuscripts but was inserted comparatively 
late by a copyist who was somehow familiar with 
Plato’s Crito and had adopted this typically human 
argument. Once inserted, the passage remained a 
most highly appreciated verse in the gospel story, 
though no critical student of the New Testament 
will venture to regard it as historical.” (Monist, 
xxiv, 3, p. 388.) 


Ze Dip THE JEws Kivi Jesus? 


‘““There is nothing more negative than 
the result of the critical study of the life 
of Jesus. 

““The Jesus of Nazareth who came for- 
ward as the Messiah, who preached the 
ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded 
the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and 
died to give his work its final consecra- 
tion, never had any existence. He is a 
figure designed by rationalism, endowed 
with life by liberalism, and clothed by 
modern theology in an historical garb. 
His wmage has not been destroyed from 
without: it has fallen to pieces...’’ (italies 
mine). 

Thus does a distinguished Christian 
scholar dispose of the fanciful ‘‘Lives”’ 
of Christ—from Renan’s at one end of the 
scale and Fr. Didon’s at the other to Mr. 
J. Middleton Murry’s—psychological ro- 
mances, most of them, utterly recalcitrant 
to the bulk of the gospel records! 

Having held a preliminary examination 


Dip THE Jews Kiti Jesus? 23 


of our witnesses, let us proceed with our 
inquiry: Can it be proved that the Jews 
put Jesus to death, using Pilate as a tool 
for accomplishing their nefarious purpose? 


24 Dip THE Jews Kixu Jesus? 


IIT 


Whenever a crime is committed the 
perpetrator of which is unknown, those 
charged with the business of discovering 
the criminal invariably attempt to estab- 
lish, above all, in whose interest the crime 
could have been committed. Cut prodest? 
is the guiding question for every trained 
penologist. Let us put the question and 
apply the principle in the case of the 
murder of Jesus. Who had in those times 
an interest in the removal of Jesus? Whom 
did he antagonize? Who was profited by 
his death? In whose eyes could his teach- 
ings and activities have been dangerous? 
These and many other kindred questions 
demand an answer. 

A distinguished Jewish scholar, Rabbi 


Dip THE Jews Kitty Jesus? 25 


Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, in a lecture delivered 
before the Chicago Institute for Morals, 
Religion, and Letters, said :— 


‘The supposition that Jesus’s religious 
opinions and practice clash with the Juda- 
ism of his time is clearly untenable. While 
it cannot be denied that the religious sus- 
ceptibilities of the people were strung to 
the highest tension, nothing, however, ap- 
pears even in those accounts of Jesus’s 
life that have come to us which would 
make it plausible that he taught or did 
aught which could have aroused religious 
opposition on the part even of the most 
punctilious among the Jews. He himself 
disclaims any intention of founding a new 
religion. As he is pictured in the gospels, 
especially according to Matthew, he is 
national in his sympathies to the core. 
He shares the national antipathy to the 
non-Jew; he would not throw pearls be- 
fore the swine or invite to the banquet 


26 Dip THE Jews Kaitu Jesus? 


such as are not of his people while his 
own compatriots are hungering for the 
bread. 

‘‘Salvation, according to him, is only 
for the Israclites. His position thus agrees, 
without the possibility of a modification, 
with the prevalent conceit of the ruling 
party in Judaism. For him, as for them, 
religion is coincident and co-extensive 
with nationality. He is far from disre- 
garding the law. He emphasizes his mis- 
sion as one come to fulfil but not to 
abolish it. The term ‘fulfil’ in this con- 
nection can only be understood if trans- 
lated back into its original Hebrew -or 
Aramaic. It certainly cannot have the 
bearing generally attributed to it by the 
current Christian theology. Fulfilment, in 
the sense in which Paul and the Church 
after him have taught it, is a concept 
altogether foreign to the thought-world 
of the Jew. The phrase attributed to the 
Nazarene cannot but be that which we 


Dip THE JEws Kitz Jesus? 27 


find in the daily prayers as preserved 
up to the present day in the common 
ritual of the synagogue. ‘I am not come 
to destroy, but to fulfil,’ recalls to one 
familiar with Jewish liturgy the passage 
in which is voiced the petition for ‘under- 
standing to do and fulfil (L’quayem) all 
the words of the Torah.’ 

‘‘The controversies in which Jesus is 
represented to have been engaged with 
the Pharisees and the Scribes reveal not 
even one single trait that would counte- 
nance the assumption of a departure on 
his part from the well-recognized princi- 
ples and standards of Jewish orthodox 
practice. His saying that the Sabbath is 
made for man and not man for the Sab- 
bath is an echo of a well-known rabbinical 
contention: ‘The Sabbath is given in your 
charge; you are not given in its charge.’ 
That to save life and to help the sufferers 
the most rigid prohibition could be set 
aside on the Sabbath is a fact which none 


28 Dip THE Jews Kitz Jesus? 


will deny who has never so superficial an 
acquaintance with Talmudical dialectics. 
The argument, thus, that on account of 
his peculiar religious doctrines or his dis- 
regard of the rights of the synagogue 
Jesus aroused the hostility of the Jews 
among whom he moved and lived, is not 
worthy of serious attention.’’ 


The moral doctrines, then, which Jesus 
taught according to the gospels could in 
no manner have aroused the suspicion, 
hatred, and violent opposition on the part 
of the Jews, whether learned or simple. 
His ethical teachings, which may be more 
than duplicated by passages of similar 
import in the rabbinical writings of the 
period,’ certainly do not of themselves 


5. Dr. Joseph Klausner, of Jerusalem, in his 
recent work, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, 
and Teachings (1925), says: “There is not one item 
of ethical teaching that cannot be paralleled in the 
Old Testament, the Apocrypha, or in the Talmudic 
and Midrashic literature of the period near to the 


Dip THE JEws KiILx Jesus? 29 


furnish an explanation why either the gov- 
erning party or the mass of the people 
should have desired to remove the teacher 
of Nazareth. 

But, some one may say, does not the un- 
usually severe language always employed 
by Jesus to the Pharisees—serpents, gen- 
eration of vipers, whited sepulchres, ete.— 
indicate that he was sharply hostile to 
them; and is it not, therefore, highly prob- 
able that they more than reciprocated this 
hostility, and determined to do away with 
one who opposed them so strenuously? 

The most learned Jewish scholars, like 
Chwolson, have, however, expressed the 
greatest astonishment at the way in which 
the relation between Jesus and the Phari- 
sees is described in the gospels. Some de- 
tails of the gospel portrait of Jesus in- 
dicate that he was of one mind with the 


time of Jesus.” Dr. Klausner also quotes with ap- 
proval Wellhausen’s famous dictum: “The Pharisaic 
teaching comprised all of Jesus’s teaching, and very 
much more.” 


30 Div THE JEws Kit Jesus? 


Pharisaic party. It would appear that he 
belonged to the moderate wing of the sect, 
who were unwilling to resort to violent 
measures to accomplish their liberation 
from foreign rule. 

Jesus would not have shared the aversion 
of the proud aristocracy of learning of the 
Pharisees toward the ignorant and un- 
learned masses; but this fact, even if more 
emphasized in conduct than in words, 
would surely not have constituted so 
flagrant a departure from Pharisaic 
standards as to account for the alleged 
bitter and unrelenting enmity towards 
him. Nor would Jesus’s claim to mes- 
sianic dignity have, per se, antago- 
nized the Pharisees, whose daily prayer 
was that the long-expected son of the 
house of David would appear to break 
the fetters of the Roman power. Indeed, 
in this respect it is the Sadducees who 
would have been alarmed.® These latter 


6. The question of the relationships between 


Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 31 


had no reason to object to a continuation 
of Roman rule. Their privileges could not 
have been larger if Judea were once more 
independent. On the contrary, as the ex- 
pected king would not be of their rank 
and caste, and as the priestly Asmoneans 
had opened the flood-gates of opposition 
and distrust on the part of the Pharisees, 
it was the Sadducees who had most to 
fear from the ‘‘Puritan’’ party, the fa- 
natics of learning, the ‘‘party of progress”’ 
of their day—the men who stood for 
the middle-class against the conservative 
priesthood and reactionary nobility. Thus 
it was the Sadducees who had little use 
for messiahs. The gospels represent Jesus, 
however, as clashing with the Sadducees. 
solely on the question of the resurrection 
of the dead. 

Taken by and large, the passages-at- 


Pharisees and Sadducees is discussed with learning 
and lucidity by Edward Dujardin in his Sources 
of the Christian Tradition. (Watts, London.) 


32 Dip THE Jews KIL. Jesus? 


arms between Jesus and his opponents 
are such that one hardly knows which is 
the more surprising: the unsoundness and 
evasiveness of some of Jesus’s replies, or 
the tameness and stupidity of the ‘‘Scribes 
and Pharisees’’ (referred to always as a 
class, never by name) in accepting or 
being confounded by them. Those who 
insist on the ‘‘absoluteness uniqueness’’ 
. and ‘‘incomparable personality’’ of Jesus 
would do well to compare his arguments 
in his conflicts with the Pharisees and 
others with the Socratic dialogues re- 
ported by Plato. 


Take the reply to those who inquired 
of Jesus whose son the Messiah was. The 
reply contains so glaring a fallacy that 
we are tempted to believe that the Phar- 
isees decided it was a waste of time to 
have any further discussion with a person 
who reasoned in this fashion. Or take 
the reply to the question as to whether it 
were lawful to pay taxes to Rome. It is 


Dip THE Jews Kiti Jesus? 33 


such a tour de force of evasion of the 
plain issue that we should have no hesita- 
tion in condemning in unsparing terms 
any modern leader or teacher who answer- 
ed a like question on the lines of Jesus’s 
reply. Nevertheless, orthodox theologians 
expend a vast wealth of ingenuity in try- 
ing to convert all this feeble dialectic 
into words of profound and godlike wis- 
dom and spiritual depth and insight, 
while the neo-Unitarian school of Christ- 
ian apologist professes to find in these 
disputes words of ‘‘divine irony’’ and 
outstanding genius. 

In short, there is nothing whxtever in 
the gospels to justify the assumption that 
the opposition of the Jewish religious 
leaders to Jesus was analogous to the op- 
position of the Papacy to a Luther or a 
Savanarola. 

These and other considerations have 
led many scholars, Jewish and Christian, 

to conclude that the bitter hatred reported 


34 Di THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 


in the gospels as existing between the 
Pharisees and the founder of Christianity 
is in reality a reflection of conditions which 
prevailed in the terrible time of the Bar- 
Kochba war of the second century, when 
Jews and Christians opposed each other 
in deadly enmity and made each other 
responsible for the judgment that had 
befallen them, when the very name of the 
followers of Jesus was hateful to the Jews, 
and when Jews and Christians alike were 
executed with fearful cruelty during the 
persecution under the Emperor Hadrian. 
(Lublinski.) These historical critics are 
also inclined to see in the reported charges 
of injustice, oppression, and blood guilti- 
ness made by Jesus against the Pharisees 
a reflection of certain passages in Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, and the book of Wisdom. 

I would not say, however, that these 
conclusions are to be regarded as ‘‘the 
assured results’’ of scholarship and _his- 
torical research. 


Dip THE Jews Kit Jesus? 35 


IV 


So far our inquiry has failed to provide 
us with an answer to the question: Who 
were profited, or believed themselves 
profited, by the death of Jesus? This is 
inevitable, for the simple reason that the 
biographical material which we possess in 
the Synoptics would scarcely fill a slen- 
der pamphlet. Outside of the last days of 
Jesus’s life, we have not, in all three 
Synoptic evangelists, the amount of more 
than two chapters of about fifty verses. 
each of strictly biographical material, be- 
sides about seven chapters of wonder- and 
miracle-stories and eight or nine chapters 
of sayings and teachings. This is all the 
material there is out of which the many 
‘‘Lives’’ of Christ are constructed, and it. 
is not sufficient to enable us to arrive at 


36 Dw THE Jews Kati Jesus? 


any certain knowledge as to why the 
Jewish rulers and people should have de- 
sired and compassed the death of Jesus. 


Before examining the legal aspect of 
Jesus’s trial somewhat in detail, I wish 
to call attention to the significant fact— 
the importance of which cannot he over- 
emphasized—that it is the motifs of shame, 
of ignominy, of mockery, and of Jewish 
contempt and hardness of heart and un- 
belief that are conspicuous in the story 
of the Passion. There are no motifs drawn 
from Jesus himself, his love, his heroism, 
his suffering, his supreme self-sacrifice 
for all mankind. It is as if the gospel- 
writers are concerned with one point only 
—the Jewish rejection of Jesus as Mes- 
siah. Their theme is not so much the 
love and goodness of God as the wicked- 
ness and hatred of the Jew! They record 
not the slightest trace of emotion on the 
part of the disciples over the death and 


Dip THE Jews Kiti Jesus? 37 


suffering of their beloved master and 
friend. What clearer proof can one desire 
than this that the narrative was framed 
as a sort of dramatic-symbolic homily 
or ‘‘story with a purpose’’ on the Jews’ 
rejection of the Jesus-cult, and is not 
a straightforward historical account of 
facts? 

Let us now turn to the story of Jesus’s 
trial and execution and examine it a 
little more closely from the legal aspect. 

On the Sunday before the Passover 
Jesus enters Jerusalem acclaimed by the 
populace, who shout ‘‘Hosanna’’ and 
strew his path with palm leaves. It is 
possible that this incident in the gospel 
‘‘biography’’ is a Midrashic’ actualization 
of an Old Testament verse and descrip- 
tion. The rabbinical books (so Dr. Hirsch, 
already quoted, assures us) ‘‘overflow 


7. For a brief but satisfactory explanation of 
the Midrash, see Couchoud’s Enigma of Jesus. 
(Watts, London.) 


38 Dip THE Jews KiLu Jesus? 


with similar textual applications, and in 
reading the chapters of this Christian 
‘Haggadah’ one expects at every turn to 
meet the standing ‘this is what is writ.’ 
In fact, it is there. For the phrase ‘that 
it might be fulfilled’ is the equivalent of 
this rabbinical introduction to Biblical 
quotations. But, as we are told by our 
authors, the welcome extended to Jesus re- 
mained significant.’? On the eve of the 
Passover Jesus eats the Passover meal 
with his disciples; at its conclusion he re- 
tires to Gethsemane® to prepare himself 
for his great public appearance. LHarly 
on the 15th of Nisan he repairs to the 
temple to accomplish its cleansing.® A 
tumult ensues; he is captured along with 


8. It has been suggested that all these accounts, 
right up to the crucifixion, are derived from an origi- 
nal mystery play in which the action is impossibly 
“telescoped,” as in Shakespeare’s Othello, etc. 

9. Origen said that this incident was nothing 
short of a miracle, adding the sceptical comment 
(worthy of a Gibbon) : “That is, if it ever happened!” 


Dip THE Jews KiLu Jesus? 39 


others. The priests lodge a complaint 
against him. Pilate investigates and dis- 
covers that he is a Galilean, a Messiah, 
whose home is the very cauldron of insub- 
ordination and revolt. Jesus appears not 
to deny his messianic pretensions. That 
is enough to seal his fate. ‘‘To the cross 
with him’’ is the summary order of the 
governor. The order is at once carried 
out. The Romans, probably at the in- 
stance of Caiaphas, crucify Jesus. At the 
instance of Caiaphas—why? Well, the 
Talmud preserves record of the fact that 
the sale of pigeons and the changing of 
money for sacrifical purposes was a mon- 
opoly of the family of Hannan, who is 
identified with the Annas of the N. T. and 
the Annanos of Josephus. Caiaphas was 
the son-in-law of this monopolist of the 
Temple bazaar. The practices in vogue 
there are the subject of comment by the 
rabbis. In breaking up this traffic carried 
10. Jewish Antiquities, xx, 9, 2. 


40 Dip THE JEws Kixu Jesus? 


on in or near the Temple, Jesus was thus 
brought into direct conflict with the most 
powerful friends of Rome. They were 
madly indignant at this meddling with 
their business privileges, and so they 
may have denounced Jesus to Pilate, 
doubtless mentioning the incident of his 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the 
fervent demonstrations of the populace 
a few days before. This is enough for the 
Procurator, who at once decides that this 
new Messiah had better be got rid of as 
speedily as possible. 

According to the gospel narrative, how- 
ever, Jesus, who is acclaimed openly on 
Sunday in the streets of Jerusalem, has 
to be pointed out to the authorities by a 
traitor among his own disciples; and the 
mob which sang ‘‘Hosanna’’ on Sunday 
shouts ‘‘Crucify him’’ on Friday. The 
latter is not impossible, of course, for to 
shout ‘‘Hosanna”’ one day and ‘‘Crucify’’ 
the next is the way of mobs the world 


Dip THE Jews Kit Jesus? 41 


over; and, further, the people who blessed: 
on Sunday were not necessarily those who 
cursed and reviled on Friday. But surely 
the circumstance of the assumed betrayal 
by Judas jeopardizes the account of a 
popular and public reception a few days 
before. The cynosure of all eyes on Sun- 
day, Jesus could not have lapsed into such 
utter obscurity that the despicable treach- 
ery of Judas—itself again a trait worked 
out simply in the fashion and method of 
the Midrash—had to be utilized to single 
him out from among his companions. 
“‘HWor Judas to have betrayed Jesus,’’ 
Karl Kautsky says, ‘‘is much the same as 
if the Berlin police were to pay a spy to 
point out to them the man named Bebel.”’ 
The whole story of the betrayal is prob- 
ably a late invention founded on the pas- 
sage in Isaiah LIII, 12, where it is said 
that the servant of God (the ebed Yahwe) 
‘‘oave himself unto death.’’* Mr. J. M. 


11. There is not, of course, the slightest vestige 


42 Dip THE Jews Kitty Jesus? 


Robertson (Christianity and Mythology) 
has clearly shown that Judas is not an 
historical personality, but rather a rep- 
resentative of the Jewish people, hated by 
the Christians, who were believed to have 
caused the death of the Saviour. 


Let us turn to the trial scene. Ever 
since Judea passed definitely under Roman 
rule, the jus gladw, or the potestas gladu, 
the power over life and death, became the 
exclusive and unquestioned prerogative of 
the imperial legatus (of senatorial rank) 
and of the procurators. It has been as- 


of evidence that the Hebrew author of this “prophe- 
cy” had it in mind that the Eternal God would have 
a son by a virgin, or that Jahveh required the ser- 
vices of an emanation of himself to come down to 
earth and die on a cross in order to accomplish his 
(Jahveh’s) work of redemption. This crude, semi- 
barbarous conception of Incarnation has absolutely 
nothing in common with the noble poetic conception 
of a humanized deity and a deified humanity which 
belongs to the higher religious thought of the Jews 
and Hindus. The noble elevation of the one idea and 
the grotesqueness of the other are poles asunder. 


Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 43 


sumed that there were exceptions to this 
rule, and those who so assume have pointed 
to the incidents related of the trial of Jesus 
in support of their contention. That would 
be legitimate if we possessed any sort of 
confirmatory evidence of the trial of Jesus 
by any historian of the period, but in the 
absence of any such confirmation we must 
regard the trial as the very fact that needs 
proof—not quote it as proof! Even if the 
Sanhedrin had the power to pronounce 
sentences of death, a trial such as is 
pictured in the gospels is well nigh an 
impossibility, on the established principles 
of Jewish penal procedure. While the 
Jewish law had not abolished the death 
penalty, it had thrown such safeguards 
around the life of the accused as to render 
the infliction of the penalty extremely 
difficult. 

It may be well here to quote a further 
passage from Dr. Hirsch’s Lecture: 

‘*So strong was the Jewish aversion to 


44, Dip THE Jews Ka.y Jesus? 


capital punishment that a court which 
once in seven years pronounced the death 
sentence was branded as composed of 
murderers. Circumstantial evidence was 
not admitted. The confession of the 
accused was not sufficient to lead to 
his conviction; at least two witnesses 
had to testify to the facts; and, further- 
more, they had to prove that the defendant 
had been warned before the act of the 
consequences of his proposed or expected 
offence. The trial had to take place in a 
certain hall of the Temple in daytime, 
never at night. 

‘‘If we believe the gospels, the court 
convened in the house of the high priest, 
and sat during the night. In matters af- 
fecting life and death the trial had to last 
two days, and one night always had to 
intervene in order to give the judges time 
for reflection, and thus keep open the pos- 
sibility of a change of their verdict in 
favor of the accused. The court was polled 


Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 45 


twice—once at the close of the first day, 
and the second time on the succeeding 
day; the younger members voting first, so 
as to guard against undue influence on 
them by the authority and weight of their 
elders. Those who on the first ballot had 
voted guilty were allowed to change on 
the second ballot, which took place on the 
next morning, their vote to not guilty. 
Those who had favored acquittal had not 
the privilege to alter their verdict. For 
this reason no trial could take place on 
the eve of a Sabbath or a festal day—a 
provision which is clearly violated if we 
accept the date of the first three gospels. 
Immediately on the finding of the final 
verdict the convicted culprit was led to 
execution. But such precautions were taken 
as looked even then for new evidence to 
acquit.’ 

It was before such a tribunal that 
Jesus would have been tried. Space will 
not permit of my going into further de- 


46 Dip THE JEws Kitz JEsus? 


tails and showing how the ‘‘trial’’ (svc) as 
related by the gospels would in several 
other particulars have been the grossest 
violation of Jewish law and procedure.” 
It may be retorted, of course, that angry 
and infuriated courts and judges have 
time and again thrown their laws and 
rules of procedure to the winds, and passed 
unjust and unlawful sentences. If we 
could trace out any clear motive for the 
unprecedented hatred and anger of the 
court and of the mob, we should be ready 
to admit the force of that retort; but in 
its absence we can only conclude that the 
gospel narratives are not worthy of seri- 
ous consideration as a record of historical 
facts. 

12. Mr. A. Taylor Innis, an eminent Scottish 
lawyer, has shown conclusively, in his Trial of 
Jesus, that the trial and condemnation were illegal 
not only from the point of view of Jewish but also 
of Roman jurisprudence. Mr. Innis inferred that 
both the Jewish and Roman authorities were guilty 


of a shameful judicial murder, without explaining 
the motives prompting their action. He overlooked 


Div THE JEws Kit Jesus? 47 


The Synoptic accounts of the trial be- 
fore Pilate differ from John’s in that ac- 
cording to the former, Jesus’s evidence 
before the Governor is limited to two 
words (‘‘thou sayest’’) ;** while the latter 
reports a somewhat lengthier conversation 
between Pilate and his prisoner. If the 
Synoptic account is correct, it is difficult 
to understand on what ground the Gov- 
ernor concluded that Jesus was innocent 
of the charge laid against him. 

Further, the reported conduct of Pilate 
is a very strange anomaly. Pilate was a 
man accustomed to handle mobs. Accord- 
ing to Philo he was of a violent tem- 


the perfectly simple and natural explanation that 
the gospel narratives were unhistorical. 

13. Such incidents as Jesus’s speechlessness at 
his trial (according to the Synoptic accounts), his 
sweating blood, cursing a tree, writing on the ground 
with his finger, etc., have led some psychiatrists to 
conclude that he suffered from one or more forms 
of nervous disorder,—a view shared, of course, by 
his parents, who bluntly declared that he was 
“beside himself.” 





48 Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 


perament, stubborn in the extreme, one 
who could never make up his mind to 
treat the Jews with justice and fair- 
play, let alone with decency and con- 
sideration (Legation to Caius, m. li, p. 
590). Agrippa I charged him with venal- 
ity, violence, robberies, insulting behavior, 
intolerable cruelties, and continued exe- 
cutions of death sentences without previ- 
ous trials. There may be some exagger- 
ation here, for the Jews never forgave 
Pilate for wanting to use the Temple 
funds to build aqueducts to provide Jer- 
usalem with water. Josephus, however, 
more or less confirms this picture of 
Pilate; and even the Emperor Tiberius is 
credited with the remark, anent Pilate’s 
administration, that ‘‘a good shepherd 
tends his flock without cutting their 
throats!’’?’ And this is the man who is 
represented as bandying words with a 
despised mob over the life of one whom 
he pronounces a just man and an in- 


Di THE Jews Ki Jesus? 49 


nocent, but to protect whom he takes no 
effective steps. Again, if only his consent 
was necessary to make the sentence of the 
Sanhedrin legal, it is surpassingly strange 
that he should have handed Jesus over to 
his own soldiers to execute. Death at the 
hands of the Jews would at least have 
been mercifully swift compared with the 
dreadful, long-drawn-out agony of death 
by the Roman method of crucifixion. 


50 Dip THE JEws Kau JzEsus? 


V 


It is now coming into clearer and clearer 
evidence, and is admitted by conserva- 
tive scholars such as Harnack, that the 
‘‘Primitive Gospel,’’ the ‘‘Sayings’’ or Q 


‘source, the oldest form yet known of the 


gospel, did not contain any account of 
the Passion and Resurrection.** It calls 


14. “The eminent French scholar Loisy, who 
though abandoning so much, yet holds to the his- 
toricity of Jesus, says, truly enough, that if this 
[the trial before Pilate] go the crucifixion becomes 
myth, and the historicity of Jesus goes with it. On 
the other hand, the eminent British scholar Cheyne, 
editor of the Encyclopedia Biblica told me in 1914 
that he feared that the crucifixion would have to 
be abandoned. This seems astonishing: .. .”—Dr. 
Greenly, “The Historical Reality of Jesus,” in The 
Rationalist Annual for 1927, page 10 (Watts, 
London). This from the learned editor of the Ency. 
Bibl. is indeed astonishing. Small wonder the clergy 
affect to regard the Ency. Bibl. and its contributors 
with an air of superior contempt! 


Dip THE JEws Kity Jesus? 51 


therefore for the utmost zeal and for al- 
most superhuman ingenuity and special 
pleading to reconcile such a fact with the 
historical authenticity of Passion week 
and its central feature of the crucifixion. 

-Another damning bit of evidence against ~ 
the authenticity of the gospel accounts of 
the central feature of Passion week is 
that of Ireneus, second-century bishop, 
apologist and martyr, a companion of the 
aged Polycarp who is reputed to have 
known the Apostle John and the elders of 
Asia. In his famous work Against 
Heresies he declares that Jesus lived to be 
an old man. The following is the notable 
passage: 

“He [Christ] came to save all through 
means of himself—all I say, who through 
him are born again to God—infants and 
children, and boys and youths, and old 
men. He therefore passed through every 
age; becoming an infant for infants, thus 
sanctifying infants; a child for children, 


a2 Dip THE Jews Kitz Jzsus? 


thus sanctifying those who are of this age. 
... So likewise, he was an ola man for 
old men, that he might be a perfect master 
for all; not merely as respect the setting 
forth of the truth, but also as regards 
age; sanctifying at the same time the 
aged also, and becoming an example to 
them likewise.’’ (Book IV, Chap. XXII, 
sec. 4.) 

If, therefore, Jesus was crucified dur- 
ing the governorship of Pilate, the entire 
chronology of his life goes to the wall, 
and the fact is established beyond 
reasonable doubt that the gospel writers 
were completely ignorant of the alleged 
events and the conditions about which they 
profess to write. 

I have so far dealt only with the 
canonical gospels, but it may not be in- 
appropriate to refer here to an apocry- 
phal account of the central feature of 
Passion week. These apocryphal stories 
are of immense value for the light they 


Dip THE Jews Kitz Jesus? 5. 


throw on the psychology of the Primitive 
Church, and they show how in the absence 
of well-grounded historical data the most 
absurd and ridiculous fictions were ac- 
cepted and readily believed. I choose the 
Gospel of Nicodemus,* and quote the 
following from the account of the trial- 
scene under the heading of The Acts of 
Pilate: 

‘‘And the Jews, seeing the bearing of 
the standards, how they were bent down 
and adored Jesus, cried out vehemently 
against the standard-bearers. And Pilate 
says to the Jews: ‘Do you not wonder 
how the tops of the standards were bent 
.down and adored Jesus?’ The Jews say 
to Pilate: ‘We saw how the _ standard- 
bearers bent down and adored him.’ And 
the procurator, having called the standard- 
bearers, says to them: ‘Why have you 
done this?’ They say to Pilate: ‘We are 


15. Tischendorf ascribes this document to about 
the middle of the second century. 


54 Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 


Greeks and temple-slaves, and how could 
we adore him? and, assuredly, as we were 
holding them up, the tops bent down of 
their own accord, and adored him? 
Pilate says, ete. . .”’ 

In this account we have another type of 
dramatic work which may, in earlier 
times, and before the gospels took canon- 
ical rank as the official scriptures of the 
Church, have been a popular mode of dis- 
playing to the non-reading populace the 
leading incidents in the career of the Son 
of Man. There is nothing inherently im- 
probable in the hypothesis put forward 
by some scholars that, while old nature- 
plays were gradually transformed into 
religious dramas, and the Barabbas 
drama*® (described by Sir J.G. Frazer in 
his volume, on ‘‘The Scapegoat,’’ part 6 
of The Golden Bough), or some other 


16. See also essay entitled “Jesus Barabbas” by 
Mme. Couchoud and Stahl in Hibbert Journal, 
October, 1926 (Leroy Phillips, Boston). 


Dip THE Jews Kiti Jesus? 55 


such drama, may have been current in 
Judea and Asia Minor, the arrest and 
tragedy of a real Jesus may have become 
associated with this transfigured mystery- 
play. 

Dio Cassius records the historic cruci- 
fixion, scourging, and subsequent slaying 
of Antigonus, the last Asmonean King of 
the Jews, by Mark Antony; and Philo 
tells a singular story of how, during the 
reign of Caligula, the populace of Alexan- 
dria insulted King Agrippa by taking a 
lunatic named (curiously enough) Karab- 
bas and dressing him as a mock king, 
paying him regal honors, and hailing him 
‘‘Maris’’—the Syrian name for king.”” 

May not these historic incidents also 
have furnished part of the material out 
of which the purely dramatic gospel nar- 
ratives were composed? 


17. Philo Judeus, Against Flaccus. See also 
Frazer’s Golden Bough, 2nd ed. iii, 191 ff. and 
Robertson’s Pagan Christs, pp. 186 ff. and 174 ff. 


56 Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 


We are thus led to conclude with Loisy 
that Jesus ‘‘suffered under Pontius Pi- 
late’’ as one of the many messianic agi- 
tators whom it was the policy of that 
procurator to put out of the way ‘‘with- 
out previous trials’’ as speedily as pos- 
sible, and that the Jews, as a people, had 
next to nothing to do with Jesus’s death. 

I therefore ask for the Jews a verdict 
of ‘‘Not guilty’’ of the charge of murder- 
ing Jesus, the Saviour-God of the Chris- 
tians; and I submit that the religious 
intolerance and persecution which have 
resulted from the mistaken belief, based 
on the gospels, that the Jews were guilty, 
form one of the most shameful pages of 
human history and a sorry comment on 
a gospel of love and forgiveness and 
brotherhood. 


Dip THE Jews Kix Jesus? 57 


APPENDIX A 


Since the foregoing was written, an 
article entitled ‘‘The Person of Jesus in 
the Christian Faith’’ by Dr. K. C. Ander- 
son in The Monist for July, 1914, has 
come under my notice. The following ex- 
tract so strongly confirms my argument 
that I make no apology for quoting it:— 

‘“‘The facts as shown by competent stu- 
dents of Jewish literature are that at the 
time when the trial and execution [of 
Jesus] are supposed to have taken place, 
none of the Jewish priests were judicial 
_ officers or members of the Sanhedrin; the 
Sanhedrin itself had no criminal juris- 
diction and did not sit in the only judg- 
ment hall where a death sentence could be 
pronounced; the provincial governors alone 
could condemn a man to death; the Roman 


58 Dip THE Jews Kitt Jesus? 


procurator was not authorized to execute 
any judgment of a non-official court; 4 
capital trial, according to Jewish law- 
court procedure, could not be consum- 
mated in one day, could not be held in the 
night, could not take place on Friday or 
the eve of a festal day; the death sentence 
was inflicted for no blasphemy except that 
of pronouncing the tabu name of Yahweh, 
for which stoning was the penalty; cruci- 
fixion was not a Jewish mode of executing 
condemned criminals; and measures were 
taken to make the execution of the victim 
as painless as possible by administering 
an anodyne to him’’ (p. 360). 


Dip THE JEws Kixy Jesus? 59 


APPENDIX B 


Reference has been made in this essay 
to the Apocryphal Gospels. While a dis- 
cussion of these does not form part of the 
immediate subject-matter of this inquiry, 
namely, Did the Jews kill Jesus? still it 
may not be out of place to add a further 
comment on them. These writings afford 
us invaluable information about the 
mental atmosphere of the Early Church, 
and as such enable us to form judgment 
on the value of the first and second cent- 
ury Church writings. If it can be shown . 
that no absurdity was too great to be 
accepted by some of the earliest of the 
Fathers we may reasonably conclude that 
eapacity for historical accuracy and 
judgment did not form part of their and 
the gospel-makers’ intellectual equipment. 


60 Dip THE Jews Kitt JEsus? 


In these circumstances, therefore, we may 
all the more confidently dismiss those 
highly colored and improbable and un- 
corroborated stories, written by some 
Rome-revering hand, of the part the 
Jews played in the death of the Christian 
Saviour-God. 

I have therefore selected a famous pas- 
sage from the non-canonical ‘‘Agrapha’’ 
or Words of Christ (derived from Frag- 
ments of Lost Documents) which Ireneus, 
referred to above, ascribes to Papias, who 
claimed that he had received this ‘‘word’’ 
of Christ’s from the Apostle John. If 
anything so fantastic and utterly irrational 
could be ascribed to an apostle of Jesus 
by so great a Church authority as Papias 
we need not be suprised at any irrational 
and absurd tradition surviving in an age 
when men believed what they wished to 
believe, and when there was no criticism 
to hold the balance between fact and 
fiction. The following is the passage :— 


Dip THE Jews Kivu Jesus? 61 


CONCERNING THE MILLENNIUM 


The days will come in which vines 
shall grow, having each ten thousand 
branches, and in each branch ten thousand 
twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand 
shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten 
thousand clusters, and on every one of 
the clusters ten thousand grapes, and 
every grape when pressed will give five 
and twenty metretes of wine. And when 
any one of the saints shall lay hold of a 
cluster, another shall cry out, ‘‘I am a 
better cluster, take me; bless the Lord 
through me.’’ In like manner, a grain of 
wheat shall produce ten thousand ears, 
and every ear shall have ten thousand 
grains, and every grain shall yield ten 
pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and 
apples, and seeds, and grass shall produce 
in similar proportions; and all animals 
feeding then only on the productions of 
the earth, shall become peaceable and 


62 Dip THE Jews Kiiu JEsus? 


harmonious, and be in perfect subjection 
to man. And Judas the traitor, not be- 
lieving, and asking, ‘‘How shall such 
growths be accomplished by the Lord?’’ 
the Lord said: ‘‘They shall see who shall 
come to them. These, then, are the times 
mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, And the 
wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid; 
and the calf, and the young lion and the 
fatling together, and a little child shall 
lead them.’’ (Ireneus, Against Heresies, 


V. 33.) 


[nls 
MYTH OF THE RESURRECTION 








THE MYTH OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION 


I 


The corner-stone of the Christian Church 
rests, we are told, on an empty grave. The 
whole fabric of historic Christianity is al- 
leged to be built on the fact that Jesus’s 
body rose from its tomb in Jerusalem, and 
that he was seen of his disciples for either 
about forty hours (according to one ac- 
count) or forty days (according to another 
account by the same writer). ‘‘If the res- 
urrection be merely a spiritual idea, then 
our religion has been founded upon an er- 
ror,’? says Dean Farrar,—although I 
question if any enlightened ante-Nicene 


66 Tuer RESURRECTION MytTH 


Father of the Church would have endorsed 
that statement. 

That the Early Church had no definite, 
accurate, authoritative, or historically 
verifiable data or traditions concerning 
this alleged Central Fact of its Faith is 
evidenced by two main facts :— 


(a) Mark’s Gospel, according to the 
oldest manuscripts (the Vatican ‘‘B,’’ 
Sinaitic ‘‘Aleph,’’ Syriac, Armenian, etc.), 
closes at verse 8, chap.16, with the words, 
‘<’ . . and they said nothing to anyone 
for they were afraid of 


HERE ENDETH THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 
MARK.’”’ 


(the colophon being in red), and contains 
no account of the appearances or as- 
cension of Jesus. 

(6) There existed during the first two 
centuries of the Christian era a number 
of gospels which contain accounts of the 


THe REsuRRECTION Mytu 67 


resurrection that are quite different from 
those of the canonical gospels, but which 
were then held in very high esteem. 

In these variations of text, and in 
these apocryphal gospels, we have a clear 
reflection of the variations of legend and 
rumor and belief which developed, con- 
flicted, died out, and revived among the 
Christians of the first and second centuries. 

One of the most highly esteemed of 
these apocryphal gospels was the Gospel 
or Recollections of Peter, which is the 
chief (but not the only) source of the leg- 
endary story of the resurrection which I 
here present. However worthless, as his- 
tory, these stories may be, they are none 
the less of incalculable value for the light 
they throw on the psychology of Primitive 
Christianity. In addition to the resur- 
rection story according to the Gospel of 
Peter, I also present an excerpt from the 
first Epistle of Clement of Rome to the 
Corinthians, for the light it also throws 


68 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


on the beliefs of the Primitive Church, 
and as a sample of late first-century 
apologetic. 


(The manuscript of the Gospel of Peter 
was discovered in 1886, in a cemetery at 
Akhmin, Upper Egypt, by the French 
archeological mission. Harnack assigns 
the first quarter of the second century 
as the probable date of composition.) 


EXCERPT FROM GOSPEL OF PETER, 
ETC. 


Translation by Robinson and Harrison 


But in the night in which the Lord’s Day 
was drawing on, as the soldiers kept guard 
two by two in a watch, there was a great 
voice in the heavens. And they saw the 
heavens opened, and two men descend from 
thence with great light, and approach the 
tomb. And that stone which was put at the 
door rolled of itself, and made way in part; 
and the tomb was opened, and both the 
young men entered it. When, therefore, the 


Tue REsuRRECTION MytTu 69 


soldiers saw it, they awakened the centurion 
and the elders,—for they too were hard by 
keeping guard; and as they declared what 
things they had seen, again they see three 
men coming from the tomb and two of them 
supporting one, and a cross following them. 
And of the two, the head reached unto the 
heavens, but the head of him that was led 
by them overpassed the heavens. And they 
heard a voice from the heavens, saying, 
“Hast thou preached unto them that sleep?” 
And a response was heard from the cross, 
“Yea.” But those who were guarding the 
sepulchre saw not how he came forth from 
it.... Now very early upon the Lord’s Day, 
Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene, their 
friends being also with them, went to the 
sepulchre to anoint the body. ... Then they 
went and found the tomb opened, and coming 
near they looked in, and see a certain young 
man sitting in the midst of the tomb, beauti- 
ful and clothed in a robe exceeding bright, 
who also said to them, “Wherefore are ye 
come? Whom seek ye? Him that was cruci- . 
fied? He is risen and gone. But if ye believe 
not, look in and see the place where he lay, 
that he is not here; for he is risen and 


70 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


gone away hither, whence he was sent.” 
[This account makes the resurrection and 
the ascension simultaneous.] Then the wo- 
men feared and fled..... 

Then the Lord appeared to them, and 
saith, “Why do ye weep? Cease to weep, 
for I am he whom ye seek. But let one 
of you go to your brethren, and say, ‘Come, 
the master hath risen from the dead.’ ” 
Then Martha went and told them. But they 
said to her, “What hast thou to do with 
us, O woman? He who is buried is dead, 
and it is not possible that he should be 
living.”” Then she went to the Lord, and 
said to him, “No one among them hath 
believed me that thou livest.” And he said, 
“Let another of you go to them, and say 
it to them again.” So Mary went and told 
them again, and they did not believe. She 
came back to the Lord and told him. Then 
the Lord said to Mary, “Let us all go to 
Them ae ie 

And the Lord went and found the dis- 
ciples within, and called to them. But they 
thought it was a phantom, and believed not 
that it was the Lord. And he said to them, 
“Why doubt ye yet and are unbelieving? 


Tue REsuRRECTION MytH 71 


Why are ye disturbed, and thoughts ascend 
into your hearts? I am he that told you, 
so that on account of my flesh and my 
death and my resurrection ye should know 
that it is I. ... Take hold, handle me; 
and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.” 
And straightway they touched him, and be- 
lieved, being convinced by his flesh and by 
his spirit. And they answered him, “We 
have indeed come to know that it is thee, 
in the flesh.” And they cast themselves on 
their faces, confessing their sins that they 
had been unbelieving. ... Afterwards he 
appeared to the eleven and upbraided them. 

. And they excused themselves, saying, 
“This age of iniquity and unbelief is under 
the power of Satan, who by means of un- 
clean spirits permitteth not the power of 
God to be perceived.” [The last two para- 
graphs are not derived from the Gospel of 
Peter. | 


EXCERPT FROM CLEMENT'S EPIS- 
TLE TO CORINTHIANS. 


Let us consider that wonderful sign of 
the resurrection, which takes place in eastern 


72 THe RESURRECTION MytTHu 


lands. There is a certain bird which is 
called a phoenix. This is the only one of 
its kind, and lives five hundred years. And 
when the time of its dissolution draws near 
that it must die, it builds itself a nest of 
frankincense and myrrh, and other spices, 
into which when the time is fulfilled, it 
enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a 
certain kind of worm 1s produced, which, 
being nourished by the juices of the dead 
bird, bring forth feathers. Then when it 
has acquired strength it takes up that nest 
in which are the bones of its parent, and 
bearing’ these it passes from the land of 
Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heli- 
opolis. And, in open day, flying in sight of 
all men, it places them on the altar of the 
sun, and having done this hastens back to 
its former abode. The priests then inspect 
the registers of the dates, and find that it 
has returned exactly as the five hundredth 
year was completed. 


I wish to direct attention to three points :— 
(a) The ‘‘Lost’’ Ending of Mark. One of 
the greatest literary problems of the New 


Tuer ReEsurrECTION MytH 73 


Testament—the problem most closely 
bound up with the (so-called) central 
fact of Christianity—is: What is the 
matter with the gospel of Mark? Some- 
thing happened to it in the first or second 
century, and for ages thereafter it was 
left truncated in the middle of a sentence 
as indicated above. 

The Abbe Duchesne favors the theory 
that the dozen verses with which in our 
Bible the gospel of Mark is ended were 
written by Aristion. Readers of modern 
translations of the Bible, such as Moffat’s 
and Goodspeed’s, are acquainted with the 
quite different and much shorter appendix 
to the gospel in which we are simply told 
that the women reported what had hap- 
pened to those about Peter, to whom 
Jesus then appeared, and through whom 
he sent the message of salvation from east 
to west. 

What really happened? There are three 
possibilities: Perhaps Mark never finish- 


74 Tue RESURRECTION MytTu 


ed his gospel, but left off at the point in- 
dicated above. Perhaps his original con- 
clusion has accidentally disappeared. Per- 
haps what he actually wrote was deliber- 
ately censored and destroyed, presumably 
because it was for some reason unsatis- 
factory to the authorities. 

The evidence in favor of the last named 
possibility is as follows: The earliest ac- 
count of the resurrection in Paul makes 
the event a series of apparitions. Mark’s 
account, in all probability the second 
oldest account, does the same. Luke and 
John both make the appearances real. In 
these later gospels Jesus is objective 
after the resurrection: he eats broiled fish 
in the former, while in the latter account 
the wounds in his side are handled by 
Thomas. Luke’s and John’s accounts 
leave no room for doubt: the evidence is 
objective and sensuous, not subjective. 

Now, the earliest Christian ‘‘heresy’’ 
was Docetism, the belief that Jesus was, 


Tue Resurrection Myts 75 


even in life, a phantom; that his flesh and 
blood were not real; that his bodily func- 
tions were different from human ones, or 
were even non-existent; and that he did 
not really suffer and die, but only ap- 
peared to do so. To combat this heresy 
the first Epistle of John was written, and 
a dire curse (alas for the unfortunate 
precedent: possibly the most damnable in 
history!) pronounced upon those ‘‘her- 
etics’’ who doubted that Jesus had been 
actual flesh and blood. Consequently, if 
Mark had written, let us say, ... ‘‘for 
they were afraid of the apparition,’’ that 
last word would have been a red rag to 
those in authority who were combating 
the Docetic heresy, and so Mark’s end- 
ing would have had to go. Or if Mark had 
repeated Paul’s impression that the 
Galilean appearances were the same in 
kind as the one to himself on the Da- 
mascus road, that, too, would have lent 
color somewhat to the apparitional theory, 


76 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


and consequently to Docetism, so that end- 
ing would also have had to go. Add to 
this the testimony of Jerome that ‘‘they 
copied things out of Luke wto Mark,’’ 
and the evidence becomes reasonably con- 
vineing that Mark’s original ending was 
deliberately censored,’ and both the longer 
and shorter appendices were added by 
later editors. 


(6) Both the canonical and apocryphal 
stories of the resurrection emphasize the 
fact that the disciples receive the news of 
Jesus’s resurrection with surprised incre- 


1. For evidence to what extraordinary extent and 
infinite detail this manufacture of and tampering 
with documents was carried, see Norden’s Agnostos 
Theos (pp. 122-124). Cf. also Pfleiderer who writes: 
“It must be recognized that in respect of the re- 
casting of the history under theological influences, 
the whole of our Gospels stand in principle on the 
same footing. The distinction between Mark, the 
other two synoptics, and John is only relative—a 
distinction of degree corresponding to the different 
stages of theological reflection and the development 
of the ecclesiastical consciousness.” (Quoted by 
Schweitzer in his Quest, p. 312.) 


THE RESURRECTION MytH 77 


dulity—‘‘idle tales,’’ they characterize the 
stories! And yet these same disciples had 
actually seen Lazarus and Jairus’s daugh- 
ter raised from the dead, they had con- 
versed with Moses and Elias on the oc- 
casion of the transfiguration, and one of 
them had even suggested the erection of 
booths to accommodate the resurrected 
prophets. They had also heard Jesus fore- 
tell his own death and resurrection in the 
most clear and deliberate manner. When 
the great news reaches them, however, they 
appear not to have the faintest recollection 
either of the foretelling or of the other 
resurrections which they had actually wit- 
nessed! The sceptical and hostile Jews, 
on the other hand, remember the prophecy 
quite well, and take the most elaborate 
precautions to prevent the disciples steal- 
ing Jesus’s body and saying he had risen, 
Really, is it credible? 


(c) The events connected with the cruci- 


78 Tue REsuRRECTION MytH 


fixion, resurrection, appearances, and as- 
cension of Jesus are without doubt the 
most startling, the most transcendental, 
that are recorded as having taken 
place on this planet. A preternatural 
darkness of three hours (without an 
eclipse) and a terrible earthquake 
take place; several deceased saints quit 
their graves and appear to their friends 
in Jerusalem; Jesus himself rises from 
his tomb on the third day, and appears 
to and moves among his followers for 
forty days, instructing and ministering to 
them; finally, he ascends to ‘‘heaven’’ 
[sic] and a cloud receives him out of 
sight—And all these stupendous, dra- 
matic, and swift-moving events take place 
in an important and closely watched 
province of the Roman Empire, and in 
an enlightened age of wide-ranging and 
deep scientific and intellectual curiosity, 
and not one historian or writer of the 
period, or within a century after, records 


THe RESURRECTION MytH 79 


a single word concerning them.—Not one 
syllable about these unparalleled marvels 
(resurrections are not everyday occur- 
rences to which one soon grows accus- 
tomed!) from Pliny the Elder (whose 
scientific curiosity cost him his life at 
Vesuvius), Pliny the Younger, Philo, 
Josephus (who mentions two other Jes- 
uses), Justus of Tiberias, Seneca, Tacitus, 
Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Socrates, Lucian, 
Marcus Aurelius ...! Is it credible? 

Many explanations have been offered 
for this utter silence on the part of en- 
lightened men who were most profoundly 
interested in religion, and, indeed, in what- 
ever of moment was transpiring in the 
Empire. Most of these, however, are so 
merely silly that their acceptance by men 
of common sense is little short of a minor 
miracle in its own way. 


80 Tue REsuRRECTION MytH 


IT 


There is a tendency today to drag the 
marvels of modern science, physical and 
psychical, into the service of Christian 
apologetic. This kind of exegesis is, how- 
ever, unhistorical and unphilosophical in 
the extreme, and those who pursue it ap- 
pear to be without the capacity to ap- 
preciate the peculiar mental atmosphere 
of the early Roman Empire.? Those who 
adopt this line of apologetic forget that 
anyone who discovers the real cause of 
a miracle must necessarily, now that he 
has obtained a thorough insight into its 
true character, no longer regard it as 
a miracle—at least in the generally ac- 
cepted sense of the word. It is not 

2. See Early Christianity by S. B. Slack (Con- 


stable, London), and Radical Views about the New 
Testament by Dr. von Eysinga (Watts, London). 


Tue REsuRRECTION MytTH 81 


for a moment to be denied that in 
many cases remarkable episodes in the 
gospels may be explained by the analo- 
gy of those marvels of physical science 
and supernormal psychical phenomena 
of our own day, which are attracting 
so much attention. But only a super- 
ficial view can find in these comparisons 
a support for the credibilty of the gospel 
stories in the matter of miracles, and the 
miracle of the resurrection in particular. 

Mark’s gospel furnishes the most direct 
and convincing evidence that the gospel 
writers shared the crude superstitions of 
their contemporaries. With a few bold 
strokes this evangelist portrays vividly the 
benefits and advantages attending member- 
ship in the New Order. What are these? 
Of foremost significance 1s the victory 
secured over Satan and his evil demons. 
This was a well aimed shaft of emphasis 
and appeal in presenting the New Way to 
a gentile world yearning for supernatural 


82 Tue RESURRECTION MytTH 


deliverance from the danger of demons 
and the fear of offended divinities. The 
twentieth-century reader will find this 
very hard to understand, for, while by 
no means free from pet superstitions— 
scientific and other—of his own, the edu- 
cated modern regards belief in demons 
and evil angelic powers as one of the 
most stupid and degraded of superstitions. 
One can hardly overestimate, however, the 
powerful appeal which Mark’s gospel was 
calculated to make to immense numbers of 
people in the Roman world. Herein they 
could learn that the Christian community 
claimed perfect immunity from the malign 
activities of demons, who had been worsted 
at the very outset in their encounters with 
the Christian God, Jesus. According to 
Mark the very first day of Jesus’s public 
activities was devoted almost exclusively 
to concrete demonstrations of his power 
over Satan and his unclean spirits. In- 
deed, Mark declares that the entire Gali- 


Tue Resurrection MytTH 83 


lean ministry was devoted to healing 
the sick and ‘‘preaching and casting out 
demons.’ 

Again, modern apologists who urge that 
it would have been absolutely impossible 
for anyone in the Greco-Roman world to 
have ‘‘invented’’ the resurrection story 
have apparently never heard of Phlegon’s 
Book of Marvellous Things. 

Phlegon, the historiographer to the Em- 
peror Hadian, wrote an account (in the 
guise of a report made by a procurator) 
of the restoration to life of a dead girl, 
which in point of seeming verisimilitude 
and good faith, as well as picturesque 
detail, appears no less veridical than the 
gospel accounts of the resurrection. At 
the end of his account Phlegon makes 
his procurator write: ‘‘In addition to all 
this, if you decide that the Emperor must 
be made acquainted with this affair, let 
me know by letter. I could even send you 
some witnesses who were spectators of all 


84 Tuer REsuRRECTION MytTH 


this!’’*> It is true that Phlegon’s story 
of a resurrection did not give rise to a 
new religion which was to supplant the 
religions of the Roman Empire, as Christ- 
ianity did, but the centrally real fact to 
note here is that such a story could be 
written by the historiographer and annalist 
of a second-century emperor, and be read 
by a cultivated pagan public. Whether 
the readers accepted it as a record of 
fact, or regarded it as a good story 
told with consummate art, is a matter of 
no importance. The fact remains that a 
cultured writer of the second century 
thought it worth while to write a story of 
a young girl who was miraculously re- 
stored to life. Doubtless some readers be- 
heved every word of it, while others took 
it for a clever ‘‘spoof,’’ done with great 
skill and artistry. 

Only a fool says: This miracle or that 
marvel is wmpossible: only the credulous 

3. See Appendix B. 


THE ResuRRECTION MytTH 85 


accept as fact stories of miracles and 
wonders for which there is not sufficient 
evidence. It is the business of historical 
research to submit the accounts of these 
to a rigid analysis, and to discover which 
wonderful cures, visions, appearances, 
etc., are supported by satisfactory his- 
torical evidence. For every one miracle 
which may be paralleled by the marvels of 
science there are a thousand and one 
which may be paralleled in the history of 
superstition and the wrong interpreta- 
tion of imperfectly observed facts,—as 
witness Clement’s ‘‘bird which is called a 
phoenix’? and Phlegon’s  resurrection- 
tale! 

Further to illustrate this important 
point: Tradition abundantly testifies the 
beneficial effects experienced by patients 
who visited the shrine of the healing god, 
Asklepios, ‘‘saviour of all men.’’ The 
fame of this sanctuary was so _ wide- 
spread that people came thither from all 


86 Tuer RESURRECTION MytTH 


parts of the Mediterranean world. Grate- 
ful convalescents left their crutches and 
canes and other paraphernalia of physical 
disability behind them as evidence of the 
deity’s curative power,—just as they 
leave them today at the grotto of the 
Lourdes, M. Coué’s, and Christian Science 
temples. Blindness, lameness, and para- 
lysis—all illnesses reported cured in the 
New Testament—were especially common 
maladies that seemed to have received 
successful treatment at Asklepios’s heal- 
ing shrine. One does not, however, deduce 
from these admitted facts the historicity 
of Asklepios, or the objectivity of his 
appearances to his devotees! 

The reader who wishes to compare the 
two main attitudes toward the problem of 
miracle—the rationalist and the Platonic 
dualist—should read Anatole France’s 
essay on ‘‘Miracles’’ in his Garden of 
Epicurus (Dodd, Mead, N.Y.) and Dr. 
P. HK. More’s The Christ of the New 


Tuer ResurRECTION Mytu 87 


Testament (Princeton University Press). 
Anatole France says the last word for the 
rationalists, and says it with the learning 
and lucidity, irony and charm—the clarté 
and mesure—that no European writer since 
Renan has achieved. Dr. More (who re- 
jects the physical resurrection of Jesus) 
sets out earnestly and clearly the position 
of the Platonic dualist. 


88 THe RESURRECTION MytTH 


Tit 


To sum up: During the past seventy- 
five years a courageous attempt, pro- 
foundly serious in aim and most thorough 
in method, has been made by European 
and American scholars and historians to 
reconstruct, out of what is recognized to 
be an accumulation of myth and legend, 
the true historical facts of the life of 
Jesus. The result of that patient and 
searching inquiry has been that such a 
person as the man Jesus, whose dim out- 
lines are seemingly restored by this long 
labor of research, may perhaps once have 
lived, but that this is not the Christ of 
Christian faith and worship and ‘‘experi- 
ence.’’ According to the working hypo- 
thesis of this New Testament criticism, 
the fictitious figure of the Christ develop- 
ed in spite of those actions and sayings 


Tuer RESURRECTION MytH 89 


of Jesus which are held to be probably 
historical. And if after so many years of 
strenuous effort the attempt to locate the 
person of Jesus in history leaves us with 
a martyred idealist, a moralistic and 
somewhat revolutionary prophet, a teacher 
from whom we may derive present-day 
inspiration, though with some difficulty; 
and if, as we are told, the historical exis- 
tence of even this far-away figure is 
still open to serious question, why not 
abandon outright the search for historical 
facts so far as it concerns the life-story 
of Jesus, and treat the narratives as pure 
symbol—just as we treat the medieval 
legends about the miracles, appearances, 
revelations, etc., of the Virgin? 

It must be remembered that the Virgin- 
Symbol has left almost as deep an im- 
press on the literature, art and social 
history of Europe as the Christ-Symbol 
itself. Both symbols were doors of escape 
from the realities of the ‘‘material 


90 Tue REsuRRECTION MytTH 


present’’ of the periods in which they were 
conceived. 

That complex movement known as the 
Renaissance was as authentic a departure 
—‘‘outbreak,’’ Pater calls it—of the 
human spirit as the Christian movement 
itself. Like Christianity, it laid open a 
new organ, initiated a new sense for the 
spirit of man; and coming as it did after 
that long night of densest darkness, the 
true Dark Age, its outbreak was as little 
to be expected as the outbreak of Christ- 
ianity. It did not, however, require a 
virgin birth, miracles, and a resurrection, 
nor indeed any single personality to 
launch the fifteenth-century movement. 
Why then should these be considered 
necessary for the first-century movement? 

‘‘All religions,’’? says Walter Pater, 
‘‘may be regarded as natural products; 
at least in their origin, their growth, and 
decay they have common laws, and are not 
to be isolated from the other movements 


THe ResurrEcTION MytH 91 


of the human mind in the periods in which 
they respectively prevailed; they arise 
spontaneously out of the human mind, as 
expressions of the varying phases of its 
sentiment concerning the unseen world; 
every intellectual product must be judged 
from the point of view of the age and the 
people in which it was produced.’’ That 
profound truth applies to the Christian 
religion as well as to all other religions. 
There is absolutely nothing remarkable 
in the fact that the Christians ascribed to 
their saviour the attributes which all the 
circum-Mediterranean peoples ascribed to 
their saviour-gods: a virgin-birth, the 
power to perform surprising miracles, a 
life of self-sacrifice for mankind, a martyr- 
death, a resurrection from the dead, and 
final apotheosis. Had they not done so, 
then we should have been justified in ex- 
claiming: Behold a miracle! 
Christianity, is not, therefore, a brand- 
new, miracle-launched religion, with an 


92 Tue RESURRECTION MytTH 


empty grave and a resurrected body as 
the central facts of its faith; it is rather 
the ‘‘resultant’’ of all the forces, re- 
ligious, ethical, philosophical, political, 
sociological and economic, at play in the 
Judean-Greco-Roman world of the first 
century.* 

Alike the best and the worst features 
of Christianity are, as Mr. J. M. Robert- 
son truly says in his Christianity and 
Mythology, ‘‘clearly within the power of 
many nameless men of the ancient civi- 
lizations.° 

‘To say this, however, is to say that 
the best, on its merits, 1s no such prodigy 
of wisdom or wsight as has been so com- 
monly asserted. During the Dark Ages, 
indeed, the Christian world seems to 


4. See The Pleroma: an Essay on the Origin 
of Christianity by Dr. Paul Carus (Open Court, 
Chicago). 

5. In this connection see also Joseph McCabe’s 
Sources of the Morality of the Gospels (Watts, 
London). 


Tue RESURRECTION MytTuH 93 


present a relative paralysis of thinking, 
due largely to the very acceptance of the 
gospel as a super-human product; such 
acceptance, however, being primarily an 
outcome of the decay of the intellectual 
life which followed on a universal des- 
potism.”’ 

It is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies 
of history that the men who fashioned the 
religion of the Western world were men 
who believed literally in gods begetting 
sons by virgins and in physical resurrec- 
tions and ascensions, and who regarded 
miracles and marvels as authentic mani- 
festations of divine power. 

Had Christianity allied itself with the 
nobler and purer elements in the re- 
ligious and ethical life of the first cent- 
ury,’ it is conceivable that it might not 


5. The student who is seriously interested in the 
study of Christian origins and wishes to obtain a 
clear insight into the higher religious and ethical 
life and thought of the Greco-Roman world of the 


94 Tuer RESURRECTION MyTH 


have developed the pronounced incivism 
towards the old imperial regime and its 
ideals, nor have developed, later, those 
religious factions and intolerances which 
helped to some extent to split the fabric 
of the Roman Empire. It is doubtless be- 
cause of this that Christianity did little 
or nothing to check the ‘‘decay of the in- 
tellectual life which followed on a univer- 
sal despotism,’’ and the consequent para- 
lysis of thinking which reached its nadir 
in the Dark Age, and for centuries made 
a shambles of Europe. 


first century must not fail to consult Gilbert Mur- 
ray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion (Columbia 
University Press, N. Y.). 


Tue ResurrRecTION MytH 95 


APPENDIX A 


Dr. William Benjamin Smith, in his 
Der vorschristliche Jesus,’ (essay entitled 
“Anastasis’’), maintains that the doctrine 
of the physical resurrection did not form 
part of the preaching of Paul and Peter 
and other primitive propagandists of the 
Christian cult. It is his view, set out with 
infinite skill and learning, that the origi- 
nal application of the phrase ‘‘raised up 
Jesus’’ was later diverted to the resusci- 
tation of the Crucified one, when the story 
of the Dying God had become popular 
among the Gentile converts, and the ac- 
count of Passion week had intruded into 


1. For a brief résumé of Dr. Smith’s views in 
his D. v. J., which has not been translated into 
English, see his essay, “The Critical Trilemma,” in 
the Monist, vol. xxiv, No. 3. 


96 Tuer RESURRECTION MytTH 


the primitive gospel—-as Harnack admits 
it did. 

When Peter declared ‘‘therefore (David) 
being a prophet and knowing that with 
an oath God had sworn to him from the 
fruit of his loins to seat (one) on his 
throne, foreseeing spake of the anastasis of 
the Christ,’’ he obviously meant by anas- 
tasis the establishment, installation, setting- 
up of the Christ (on the throne of David), 
and not the resuscitation or raising from 
the dead. What conceivable sense, so 
argues Dr. Smith, would there have been 
in Peter’s saying that David, knowing 
God had promised to establish a lineal 
successor on his throne, foreseeing (the 
fulfilment), spake of the resurrection from 
the dead of the Christ! If, however, by 
anastasis the speaker meant establishment, 
and not resuscitation, all is in order and 
he is speaking rationally and intelligibly 
to his hearers: if not, his logie fails and 


Tue REesuRRECTION MytH 97 


becomes hard or impossible for them to 
understand. 


It appears therefore that none of the 
three earliest New Testament ‘‘character- 
izations of Jesus’’—the phrase is Dr. 
Bacon’s—Paul’s Mark’s, or Q’s contained 
any account of the physical resurrection 
of Jesus’s body from its grave in Jeru- 
salem. 


Dean Inge has said of Paul, in another 
connection, that ‘‘there are some trans- 
formations of which the religious mind 
is ineapable.’’? I should be inclined to 


2. The learned Catholic ecclesiastic and _his- 
torian, Monsignor Louis Duchesne, calls attention, in 
his Early History of the Church, to the amazing 
volte-face executed by “the author of the Epistle 
to the Romans [who] after having bid so decided 
and final a farewell to the Law of Moses once again 
feels its weight upon his rebellious shoulders, and 
submits to the ‘Yoke of the Law’” in the shape of 
the ritual purification in the Temple, after his dis- 
pute with the Jerusalem elders. He must be a bold 
man who would lay down dogmatically what was 
possible and what not possible to a man of Paul’s 
temperament! 


98 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


say that the dean’s characteristically dog- 
matic assertion applies admirably here, if 
it applies at all. If there is one transfor- 
mation of which the religious mind does 
indeed appear well nigh incapable it is 
this that Paul, with his rigid monotheistic 
training as a rabbinical Jew and all that 
that training implies, could have dallied 
with the idea of a dying god-man rising 

bodily from a grave in Jerusalem and — 
ascending to heaven to occupy the posi- 
tion of pro-Jehovah. Is it not possible that 
Paul himself came to feel this, hence his 
shifting the centre of his theology from 
the resurrection to the crucifixion, and 
subsequently shifting it from both these 
to the incarnation? Crucifixions and resur- 
rections are the sort of events for which 
people are likely to ask for evidence: in- 
carnations belong to a more rarified meta- 
physical atmosphere. I am disposed to 
think that Paul fell back on the inear- 
nation appeal partly because it fitted in 


Tue RESURRECTION MytTH 99 


somewhat more naturally with his own 
religious background as a strict rabbin- 
ical Jew, and partly because he may have 
found it increasingly difficulty to establish 
the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus 
as historical events which had happened 
twenty years before. To the pious Jew 
the idea of a crucified and risen country- 
man of his occupying the position of pro- 
Jehovah would have been the worst of 
‘‘stumbling-blocks.’’ To the cultivated 
Pagan the story might well appear to be 
the last word of ‘‘foolishness’’—one more 
fanciful religious cult hatched in the cult- 
breeding East. The incarnation appeal 
would however lack the more objection- 
able features of the other appeal, both 
to Jew and Gentile. 


100 Tue RESURRECTION MyTH 


APPENDIX B 
PHLEGON’S RESURRECTION STORY 


Philinnion, daughter of Demostratos and 
of Kharito, though dead, secretly joins a 
guest of the family, Makhates. The nurse 
surprises them. 

... She opens the door, enters the 
guestroom, and sees the young girl seated 
by Makhates. . . . She runs to the 
mother, and presses Kharito and De- 
mostratos to follow her and see their 
daughter. ... Kharito, when she heard 
this incredible account, was at first over- 
come by the gravity of the news, and was 
on the point of swooning. Then, the 
memory of her daughter supervening, she 
wept. Anyhow, she said that the nurse 
must be out of her mind, and bade her 


Tuz ResuRRECTION MytH 101 


go away. But the nurse reproached her 
and said: ‘‘I am not mad nor have [I lost 
my wits.’? At length Kharito, half in- 
fluenced by the nurse’s insistence, half 
by curiosity to know the truth there was 
in all this, came to the door of the guest- 
chamber. ... The mother, gazing ear- 
nestly, thought to recognize the dress 
and outline of the face. As she had 
no means of verifying what she saw she 
went back to bed: she counted on rising 
early and surprising her daughter, or, if 
too late, on learning from Makhates, who 
would never lie when asked about such 
a matter. At the first light of day the 
young girl, whether at the bidding of 
some god, or by chance, withdrew, and 
disappointed her mother. The latter... 
embraced the knees of Makhates and ab- 
jured him to conceal nothing and not to 
distort the truth. He, touched, and anx- 
ious of heart, could scarcely speak. 
‘ooTis she, ’tis Philinnion,’’ he said. 


102 THe RESURRECTION My tH 


.. . And that they might not doubt his 
words be opened a coffer and drew from 
it what she had left behind: a gold ring 
which he had had of her, and a strip 
of stuff that she had forgotten to knot 
round her bosom on the preceding night. 
Kharito, seeing these manifest signs, gave 
a loud ery, tore her garments, snatched 
the bands from her head, flung herself on 
the ground, and for the second time fell 
into great lamentation. Seeing everyone 
in the house in great grief and weeping, 
as though they must shortly bury Kharito, 
Makhates set himself to console the mother, 
begged her to cease her laments, and prom- 
ised to show her her daughter did she 
return. ... When night fell and the hour 
approached when Philinnion was used to 
come to the man she loved, all waited her 
advent. She came. When she entered the 
chamber at the accustomed hour and when 
she was seated on the couch Makhates 
showed no surprise. ... He sent a slave 


Tue REsuRRECTION MytH 103 


to summon Demostratos and Kharito. They 
came; and saw Philinnion. For the mo- 
ment they stood dumb, overwhelmed, 
thunderstruck by such a prodigious sight. 
Then with a loud outery they embraced 
their daughter. [Philinnion speaks to her 
father and mother, telling them that it 
was not without the divine will that she 
came thither.] She spoke and fell dead. 
Her body reposed visibly on the bed. The 
father and mother embraced her. There 
was great tumult and lamentation through- 
out the household at a spectacle so terrible 
and irreparable, at so incredible a happen- 
ing. The rumor of it spread quickly 
through the town and reached me. [This 
is the Procurator writing.] The same 
night I held back the crowd which flocked 
to the house, for I feared lest something 
extraordinary might be attempted on the 
making public of such startling tidings. 
That day the scene of events was crowded 
with the curious. When individual evi- 


104 Tur RESURRECTION MytTH 


dence had been taken of all the circum- 
stances we agreed to go first of all to the 
tomb to satisfy ourselves if the corpse 
were in the coffin or whether it stood empty. 
When we had opened the vault where lay 
all the dead of this family we saw the 
other bodies stretched on their couch and 
the bones of those who had died long 
since. On the bed where Philinnion had 
been laid in her winding-sheet we found 
the guest’s iron ring and the golden cup 
she had received on the first day from 
Makhates. [This detail sounds quite as 
veridical as the folded linen napkin found 
in Jesus’s grave. | 

Surprised, surprised even to stupor, 
we went straightway to Demostratos and 
into the guest-chamber to see whether the 
body of the young girl were really there. 
Having seen it, stretched on the ground, 
we returned to the Assembly, for what 
had come abcut was a great and incredible 
thing. The Assembly being in a tumult, 


Tue REsuRRECTION Mytu 105 


and as it was almost impossible to get 
anything done, Hyttos, who passes with 
us not only as an excellent divinator but 
also for a great augur, and who has 
deeply studied everything concerning the 
art of divination, rose and ordered that 
the corpse of the young girl should be in- 
humed outside the precincts. He ordered 
that Hermes of the underworld and the 
Erinnys be appeased. He prescribed puri- 
fication for each and all.... He par- 
ticularly laid upon me that I sacrificed — 
to the Emperor, to the Republic, to 
Hermes, to Zeus the Harbourer, and to 
Ares, and to do all with rigor. This he 
said, and we did what he ordained... . 
In addition to this if you decide that the 
Emperor must be made acquainted with 
this affair, let me know by letter. I could 
even send some witnesses who were 
spectators of all this. Farewell. 


[The above is taken from Anatole 


106 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


France’s Note to his Bride of Corinth, 
English translation by Wilfred and Emilie 
Jackson. John Lane, London; Dodd, 
Mead & Co., New York.] 





Tue Resurrection MytH 107 


APPENDIX C 
DR. MORE ON THE RESURRECTION 


In his Christ of the New Testament, Dr. 
Paul Elmer More writes :— 


‘‘Hiven sympathetic readers of the Bible 
have felt constrained to explain this say- 
ing of Jesus about removing mountains 
by faith as a bit of Oriental exaggeration. 
Perhaps it is so; yet, after all, what is 
there in the words more than in the 
equally positive, though less concrete, 
statement: ‘All things are possible to him 
that believeth?’ And yet why should we 
suppose that Jesus did not intend what 
he said to be taken literally? Miracle of 
any sort or degree is merely an irruption 
into the realm of mechanical causes from 
that unseen other-world of the mind or 


108 Tuer RESURRECTION MytTH 


spirit which obeys a law of its own. And 
if mind can effect any the least change 
in the field of material phenomena, why 
should we be appalled at those greater 
works of the spirit? It is a question of 
faith. Without faith in its power over the 
body the mind cannot cause our arm to 
raise or our foot to move, as we see in 
the impotence of an hypnotic patient. 
Why then, by an extension of faith, should 
not the spirit of man exercise unlimited 
control over its yielding environment? ...”’ 
(page 265.) 


Let us now turn to page 271, where 
Dr. More is discussing the miracle of the 
resurrection. 


‘¢ . . Apart from these inconsistencies 
the narrative bears the unmistakable stamp 
of legendary invention. It is, for instance, 
impossible to form any clear conception of 
such a body as Jesus is represented as 
wearing, a body which passes through 





THe ResurRRECTION MytH 109 


closed doors yet is palpable and can eat 
solid food. The Gospel story of the risen 
Christ, beautiful though it may be in 
some respects, lowers the spiritual life 
to a semi-materialism which has left an 
unfortunate trail in religion; it ought to 
be surrendered as pure superstition, or, at 
the least, be interpreted symbolically. 
Happily there are other ways of treating 
the resurrection.’’ 


It occurred to me that Dr. More had 
rather doubled on his tracks here, and so 
I took the liberty of taking him to task 
for his inconsistency. 


‘“‘On your premises,’’ I wrote him, 
‘‘(as set out on pages 265 to 266) it 
would appear that the act of raising 
one’s arm, saying ‘Come’ to a friend, the 
removal of a mountain, and the passing 
of a flesh-and-blood body, which takes 
food and drink, through a closed door, 
are, each in their own degree, the result 


110 THe RESURRECTION MytH 


of faith. The last named act does not ap- 
pear to me, therefore, to be su genéris, 
but to belong to the same class as the 
others. If the spirit of man can, by ‘an 
extension of faith, exercise unlimited con- 
trol over its yielding environment,’ why 
should not the spirit of Jesus exercise 
unlimited control over its ‘environment’ 
of body?’’ 


To this Dr. More replied as follows :— 


...1t is proper to ask, as you do, why, 
having granted so much to the miraculous 
or possible-miraculous, I should draw back 
at this particular event. I do not know 
that I can justify my seeming inconsist- 
ency. My feeling is that these (the Gos- 
pel) accounts of the palpable body rather 
confuse and merge together the spiritual 
and the material, whereas in the case of 
true miracles we see the dominance of the 
spiritual over the material.’’ 





Tue ResurrEcTION MytH 111 


Thus does an eminent classicist and 
Christian scholar, who, on philosophical 
grounds, accepts miracles in general, re- 
ject belief in the resurrection of Jesus’s 
body, on the ground that it tends to 
‘‘lower our conceptions of the other 
world,’’ and fosters a ‘‘semi-materialism 
which has left an unfortunate trail in 
religion.’’ 


Doubtless Anatole France would have 
smiled ironically if he had read Dr. More’s 
philosophical defense of miracle based on 
his dualistic premises, and had noted his 
sudden retreat from his own position 
which, philosophically, appeared so im- 
pregnable. Faced with the problem of 
the physical resurrection Anatole would 
simply say: ‘‘Hither it is not, or it is; 
if it is, it is a part of nature and there- 
fore natural;’’ and he would wave aside 
all discussion about the ‘‘concurrent oper- 


112 Tue ResuRRECTION MyTH 


ation of two radically distinct orders of 
existence.’’ And all the wise ones would 
say: ‘‘Of course, Anatole France is no 
philosopher !”’ 





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